She Had the World
by Aeterna013
Summary: She's always been an odd one. She sets fire to all the bridges that might lead anyone close to her, and she dances around sprinkling the ashes into the air. OneShot.


**Disclaimer: **I do not own Skins UK. I do not own Cassie Ainsworth. I do not own any real world references made in this fic.

**A/N:** This is my very first Skins fanfic. Many thanks go out to my wonderful friend Caitlyn for introducing me to this lovely show. I can never thank her enough it seems. The Effy to my Cassie she is.

**Enjoy?**

* * *

She finds it to be quite odd when she hears someone say the words "make love". She's sure she's never done such a thing, and she's not quite sure that she could. I mean sure she's fucked guys, plenty of them. She's fucked girls too. Yeah, it felt nice and all, but there wasn't anything to do with love involved. She wonders to herself, "When was the last time that _anyone _ever made love with someone?"

All she has is her experience. She enjoys fucking people. Sometimes when she starts to feel bad she'll fuck anyone, just to rid herself the sound of her own thoughts. The more drunk or high she is the better it seems. The rougher and angrier it is the better she feels, in more ways than one. And when she gets lonely she'll screw anyone who crosses her path. She's quite a whore honestly.

* * *

She loves routine. With so many unforeseen changes in the day she loves the things that she can control, the things she can be sure will stay the same.

When she was a young, diminutive girl she would always wear her days of the week underwear on the exact day it was supposed to be worn on. She would meticulously position each item in her room, so it could be an organized mess where she knew where everything was.

All of her teachers loved her, she never did cause any trouble and they all found themselves attached to the sweet little girl. Her teachers would sing praises to her, their sweet little Cassie. After a while they began to wonder why her parents would never show up to parent teacher conferences though. It didn't make much sense that a child as sweet as Cassie wouldn't have tender, devoted parents.

When they questioned her, she just brushed it off, "Oh yeah, they were busy, but they'll totally be here next time." And she'd smile that Cassie smile that shines so brightly, but is so practiced it only appears to be authentic.

The little girl who never forgets to raise her hand, the one child who would always ask permission, and give the brightest smiles is the one child that the teachers know the very least about.

After a while, they quit asking her. They were never really _that _curious anyway.

Little Cassie brings home field trip forms that never get signed. In her weekly folder there are stickers, smiley faces, and good test grades that never did get a smile and a "Good job Cass. We're so proud of you!" and a smile like she imagines so many other children get.

She knows that her parents do love her, but she can't help but wonder if they really actually _like_ her. She thinks that there's a vast difference between liking and loving someone. The way she sees it, you can love absolutely anyone. However, in order to like someone you have to like all of them, the great parts of them, and the gory, nasty bits. You can choose to like them though. It's all your choice. Everything is your choice, after all.

So by default her parents are obligated to love her, just like she is obligated to love them. That doesn't mean that they necessarily like each other though.

To her parents it's as though she's not even around a lot of the time. They argue a lot, and the only time they're not bickering is when they're having sex.

Yes, she knows what sex is. She never needed to get "the talk". Unfortunately, one of her very first memories is of her parents doing _it_. As she got older, she came to the conclusion that she'd rather have them constantly going at it like animals than constantly fighting. Although, for both circumstances it still would be wonderful if they would have invested in sound proof walls.

With all the fighting and shouting she turns into a heavy sleeper, and soon enough she finds that most nights she can tune out everything but the sound of her own thoughts.

* * *

She had several phases while she was growing up.

She goes through phases where she wants to be a doctor, a dancer, and then a pop star. She wants to be everything in the world, because she's young and innocent and feels like the world is spiraling underneath her feet with her bright blue toe polish. She watches as the moon trails after her in lengthy car rides and imagines she can reach out of the window and clutch on to it, because it's all hers. Everything is her playground. She runs and runs and the earth spins beneath her because the whole universe all belongs to her.

She is Cassie and she is invincible.

When she's seven years old she announces to both of her parents that she needs directions to Neverland because she intends to move there and never grow up. Her parents tell her that it's just a stage that she's going through and that she'll be _so_ happy so and grown up in no time. She only smiles her special smile at them, knowing that they'll think she actually believes them.

They always tell her that she's going through phases. And maybe they are right about that.

She grows to have phases where she'll only wear certain clothes, and then she has phases where she'll only style her hair a certain way.

Lastly is her incredibly strange phase with food.

For months and months she eats nothing but Ramen Noodles, and then she is wild about grilled cheese. Later she becomes obsessed with Macaroni & Cheese. Lastly she finds love in Hamburgers. Each time she has a favorite food it's pretty much all she eats for months and months. She loves it because it's so tasty; she eats all of it over and over again until she's absolutely sick of it. Then she runs away to something new. She runs away to something even better. There are just so many new foods to choose from, and it seems like she'll never run out, _wow_.

* * *

She receives her very first taste of power when she's six years old.

It's a Saturday, her favorite day of the week and her parents have taken her out with them to a shopping mall with them. There are so many stores and they are all filled with different things; she skips from store to another looking at everything.

In one toy store there's an abundance of model airplanes. She takes one tentatively into her hand and examines it closely, looking at all of the tiny details. It makes her think of her first plane ride when she was five. She remembers how she enjoyed looking out into the sky. The clouds were different than what she imagined they would be like. The ease in which the planes glided through them were unsuccessful at making her calm, instead leaving her feeling disconcerted. She had never imagined that clouds could be so thin. They always looked so large and thick from down on the ground, and seeing them like this made her feel paper thin. She supposed that everything was different once someone stopped and studied it in detail.

When she looks up after a while she discovers that her parents are nowhere in sight. This doesn't alarm her, for she's sure that they must be around the corner somewhere. She steps over to another section of the store and sees a shelf full or rain makers. She picks it up and turns it to the side listening to the rush of noise. She moves it next to her ear listening to the sweet sound echoing from the small object. She feels powerful for some reason, she controls this item in her hand, and she controls the length that the sound goes on, the speed at which it plays through the room. She steps softly from foot to foot, in a soft dance moving along with the rain maker. She feels like air. She thinks of the book on Greek Mythology in her bedroom. For some reason the Greek god Zeus ruler of Mount Olympus comes to mind. He rules over the sky, and she wonders if this is how he feels. Does the world seem so very small and simple in his hands as he sends rain, and thunder storming down, inflicting chaos upon everyone?

She thinks of all the power that he has, and she wonders if she could ever be like that. She wonders if she could ever grow to be someone that could have power over another.

She slowly places the rain maker back down on the shelf suddenly feeling like everything in the store is small and breakable. She looks at the clock hanging over the top of the shelves to see what time it is. It's been forty-five minutes and her parents are nowhere in sight. She walks towards a sales associate and stops to look back at the rain maker feeling as though the moment she just had was bigger than any she had ever experienced before.

As two workers lead her towards a back room to call her parents, and as they hand her a candy bar she thinks how one day she could grow to have the potential to possess power over everyone that she knows.

* * *

One year for her birthday she gets a Russian doll. She's upset for a moment because instead of being her favorite color red it's a deep blue color. She doesn't even understand what it is at first until her father explains it to her.

"It's a Russian doll," he explains to her. "If you open it up there's another one inside of it. It keeps on going on until it gets to the smallest one." He said, before handing her the next present.

Occasionally she looks at it and thinks how it sometimes seems more human than wooden sometimes. She thinks that all people must be like that, showing you an outside face yet over time you uncover layer by layer until there is nothing left. There are so many different secrets, so many memories contained inside of a person that Cassie can't help but wonder who created the very first Russian doll. Whoever it is must have had a deep understanding of people and all the different parts of them, she thinks to herself.

She keeps it on a shelf in her room, right next to her old stuffed elephant. She doesn't pay much attention to it anymore, but every now and then she'll stop and take it off her shelf. She'll examine it and start rubbing off any visible traces of dust. She feels a small pang of jealousy looking at it sometimes, for how wonderful must it be to know that however strange you may appear to be on the outside all one has to do is take off your layers until you get smaller and smaller. Everything about you, your fears, desires, and your secrets; all the things your keep buried in your soul in the smallest piece. How lovely, to be able to unwrap yourself and be so small. To be so tiny.

* * *

She didn't lose her baby fat as quickly as other little girls her age did. Being different from other girls was one thing that she was used to, but looking different was an entirely new problem, a much bigger problem. She simply couldn't help but to take notice of the way their clothes fit on them, and the way they could make any face in the world and not have more than one chin.

It was after that that she started noticing the different sizes that clothes came in. Somehow the smaller the size was the prettier the clothes were to her. And the people who wore all those blessed tiny sizes were just so _lovely_.

One day she sat in the dressing room staring at her reflection in the mirror. She liked reflections, enjoyed reflective surfaces. She could be vain at times taking in the few things that she liked about her appearance. Sometimes she thought she was pretty even, but at this moment that was not the case. It was her first time getting a bra and she felt disgusting, without a shirt on she could see every imperfection, little rolls and a small bulge where the beginnings of womanly curves should be. For the very first time in her life she felt _fat_.

"Doesn't she look so gorgeous in her dress?" She heard a woman exclaim. "She looks absolutely darling!"

Young Cassie looked out of the dressing room to take in a beautiful little girl with dark hair and bright clear eyes. And she's so much tinier and so much prettier than Cassie ever could be that she feels small, like someone took a great big rock and slammed it down on her, breaking her in half. She rushes out of the dressing room, and skips merrily over to the little girl.

"Wow, you look so beautiful." She says as she tugs her hair in her hand, watching the little girl twirling in front of the mirror.

The little girl stops twirling and turns to face her. She's so tiny and lovely and Cassie is not. She doesn't deserve to have this wretched plain girl even speaking to her.

"I'm Michelle," she says extending her right hand out towards Cassie. She looks at the other girls hand and lifts hers out hesitantly, "Cassie," she responds.

* * *

She learns what a diet is the first time she goes out to dinner with Michelle and her mother. She had put on her nicest outfit and combed her hair _twice_ in order for her to look her absolute best. Unfortunately, she still paled in comparison to Michelle. Michelle orders her meal, then her mother, and lastly Cassie orders.

When their meals arrive, she looks at the unappetizing array of leaves on the plate to the right of hers. When Michelle's mother leaves to answer a phone call, Cassie turns towards Michelle.

"Why is your mother eating that?" she inquires.

Michelle takes a sip of her drink, "She's on a diet. It's so her big ass doesn't get any bigger." She replies.

"Oh wow," Cassie remarks thoughtfully. "So, if you eat that you won't get fat or anything, yeah?" she says pointing to the salad placed at her right.

"Pretty much." Michelle says before going back to eating her food. "You're staying over tonight?" she asks Cassie whose thoughts have drifted far off.

She smiles at her in response, "Oh yeah. Totally."

* * *

She's eight years old when she watches the movie _Alice in Wonderland_ for the first time. It's all so strange, and oddly brilliant, and she watches it three times in a row. Afterwards she goes outside into her small backyard and sits down on the grass, taking in the last bits of sunlight. She looks up and smiles when she sees two trees swaying with the wind. The breeze surrounds her, and after a moment she can't help but sway side to side, matching their graceful movements. They rock back and forth and she wonders what would happen if one suddenly crashed down on top of her. She's sure that she wouldn't move or scream. She'd just let it land. She wonders how long they'd lie on top of her, and how long it would take before she'd bleed to death. Maybe the leaves would fall on her like a blanket sending her away into somewhere nice and beautiful.

"I sway with the trees, sway with the trees. We're dancing into the night time." She says softly to the night. She knows that no one's out there, but she feels that in this moment, maybe just maybe the trees can hear her whispering to them.

After a few quiet moments she hears her mother calling her name inside, and she stands up slowly before blowing a kiss up to the tree's leaves.

"Goodnight." She says, before walking inside and closing the door behind her.

* * *

The internet is a wonderful place full of lonely girls who are all trying to be beautiful. She makes this discovery a week after her sleepover with Michelle. She learns new words like "_pro ana" _and "_thinspo"_. There are lovely websites filled with beautiful girls baring their lovely selves. Where Cassie has meaty flesh these girls have hollow indentations. She wonders what it would feel like to walk and not feel your legs rubbing together at all.

The thinspo quotes are just so lovely. She writes them down in her diary, and she memorizes them.

Every time she starts to feel hungry now she recites them to herself. They're like magic, and suddenly those disgusting greasy fries are no longer appetizing but absolutely filthy.

It's her brand new secret weapon.

She learns their dirty, filthy little secrets and she uses them to no end.

She eats on dark colored plates, and she cuts and arranges her food into little tiny pieces. She sets down her fork and chews each bite thirteen times. Afterwards she drinks a whole bunch of ice water.

She talks so much, and her parents never paid much attention to her in the first place, so it's even easier than she imagined.

The hard part is the feeling.

She's _really_ fucking hungry.

So she recites thinspo quotes more often, and she eats in front of the mirror. She thinks of how wonderful everything will be once she's skinny and lovely. She watches as the numbers on the scale begin to drop.

This time it _is_ an authentic smile that comes to her face.

* * *

One week during the summer, when Michelle travels with her mother to Paris, Cassie's parents go out of town for their anniversary. They leave Cassie with some old friends who live across town. The family is nice for the most part. They have a daughter named Kacy around her age who is fun to hang around with, and the mom _actually_ knows how to knit and bake. It's so very magical. They also have a son, much older than Cassie. She feels on edge whenever he's around, though she can't figure out why. He hasn't done or said anything, but he gives her these strange looks as she runs out of the shower clad in only a small towel. She can't shake the uneasy feeling she gets when his eyes linger on her some nights.

On one of the nights she's there both parents go out to dinner. It's their "date night" as they so fondly called it. They tell the kids to behave, and then they leave all smiles and happiness.

Kacy and Cassie go off into Kacy's room. They have so much fun dressing up, dancing to music, and watching television together. They put on a movie and after a short while Cassie looks over at Kacy and sees that she's fallen asleep. She pulls the covers up around her and kisses her forehead lightly.

"Night Kacy Kat," she whispers to the resting girl.

As she enters the kitchen to grab a glass of water she notices that she's not alone. Kacy's older brother Marcus is there along with two other boys.

They turn around when they see her.

"Cass, you're real grown up for your age, yeah? I mean look at you, you hardly look like a little girl." Marcus says wryly.

"Oh, yeah… Sure." she responds wondering what he's trying to get at. Her throat is dry and uncomfortable and all she wants is to be able to go to bed.

He grabs her right hand with his and he pulls her towards him until she's right in front of him. She can feel his body heat against hers, and he smells like alcohol. She tries to jerk her hands back, but he grins wickedly and his friends only laugh at her obvious discomfort.

"Well," he says suddenly, "Us grownups, we're good with secrets. We like to play games. I've decided that you're grown up enough to play this special game with me, but it has to be a _secret_ do you understand Cassie? _No one_ else can know about this." he says as he places her hand over his zipper and unzips his pants slowly. "We'll take turns. I'll touch you and you'll touch me, and my friends will watch to make sure we're playing the right way, got it?"

It's more of a command than a question she realizes and she's speechless. She can't move and nothing makes sense. Some part of her knows that there isn't something right about this, yet she can't bring herself to scream, she can't bring herself to move. She's frozen.

She has a vague recollection of her hand slowly being moved to the inside of his pants and then touching something, but then everything in her mind goes blank.

She doesn't remember what happened that night. She doesn't remember waking up the next morning, or any of the other days she spent there.

When her mom picked her up and asked her if she had fun, she simply smiled, and turned her head downwards to the ground so that she wouldn't have to look at her own face reflecting back at her.

* * *

Years later she walks into her house around two in the morning to the door unlocked, the lights off, and the lovely sound of her parents fucking each other upstairs. Hopefully they're in their own room this time. They're like rabbits, all over each other. So wonderful. She loves her parents, she does. They're not horrible or anything. They're just always going at it. Maybe she's a whore because it's in her genes or something. Then again, her mum is married so, it's not like she could really classify her as a whore. Oh wow, well maybe she'll figure something out.

She walks up the stairs to her bedroom and sets down her bag beside her bed. Turning to the mirror she sighs. Not only does her reflection repulse her, but her makeup is smudged, her hair is a tangled mess, and she smells like sex. All in all, she looks horrible. She remembers when she was younger how her mother used to love fixing up her hair, and dressing her up. She'd tell Cassie how beautiful she was, and they'd go out so everyone could see them looking nice. Now, she can't even remember the last time her mother told her she was pretty.

Walking towards the bathroom she slips off her dress and shoes. As she takes off her bra and panties she steps towards the shower. She wonders what it would be like to come home to a house and find all of the lights on. In this house instead of her parents moaning, and groaning to be met with a stern but loving mother who has been waiting up for hours and hours, frantically pacing around and all worried about her.

"Where on earth have you been young lady?" she'd exclaim. "Do you have any idea what time it is? Any clue how worried I was?" she'd ask exasperatedly.

And then she'd ground her for a week or something, and they'd sit down and have a chat about responsibility, and drink tea and watch cartoons about a talking sponge that lives under the sea and has a snail for a pet. Then her make believe father would walk down with her little brother Reuben and they'd all take turns feeding him ice cream and playing checkers, all happy and family like.

It sounds so lovely.

She steps into the shower and smiles at her pretty rib cage; it's practically begging to be set loose from the horrid body keeping it locked in.

"One day I'll set you free," she promises.

* * *

After the _incident_ not eating became more than just a quick way to get thin, or a fun way to watch the numbers on her scale drop. It became a new kind of high that only she could feel, it became one that she thrived off of.

She discovered how once you get past the beginning stages of hunger, the part where your stomach growls and your sides hurt that there's a blissful feeling, where you feel like you can float from all of the emptiness.

She doesn't starve herself to be thin, oh no she starves herself because she's angry, and she's hurt, and she's so very bitter. She's bitter and she wants to feel okay, she wants to feel _beautiful_. She starves herself because she wants to, and because no one could stop her even if they wanted to.

It's all a game she realizes one day. It's all a game and _everyone_ thinks that they've beaten her. She almost wants to laugh at the absurdity. What they don't understand is that this is _her_ game. It's her game and she is the one making every single one of the rules.

The first rule of her game is that the rules are constantly changing given the circumstance. This way, Cassie is always three steps ahead of everyone else. The second and final rule of the game is that only Cassie can win. _Checkmate_.

* * *

When Cassie meets Sid she only knows three things about him. The first being that he's completely and helplessly in love with Michelle, the second being that he's a virgin and she's supposed to fuck him that night, and the third being that he has a bunch of drugs with him. Unfortunately for her it's a bunch of spliff and no pills whatsoever.

She likes Sid. He's funny looking, kind of geeky but in a cute, endearing sort of way. He's different from most of the guys that Cassie knows. For one thing, he's a virgin, and for another he's just not like anyone else. She finds herself wondering about him. She thinks that she just might like him.

The party is very loud, the D.J is blaring dance music and she can hear people yelling and laughing. From the corner of her eye she can make out the image of people dancing by the window.

Unlike everyone else however, Sid and Cassie are outside. The two of them are lying beside each other on the trampoline. Just being. They don't even talk really; they just sit there in silence. It's nice. They don't even fuck each other that night. Much to Cassie's surprise and amusement, Sid doesn't even mention it once. She knows the reason why of course. She can be a bit absent minded at times, but she's not blind. She saw the way he had been watching Michelle with Tony earlier, a look of sadness and longing on his face. She wished that she could help him feel better, but she knows that she's not who he wants right now. It's nothing Cassie did, and she knows that really there's nothing that anyone could do, but she can't help but feel like a little girl again, wishing that she could fit herself into Michelle's tiny clothing.

* * *

The next morning Cassie wakes up early, before everyone else. This is something she's become accustomed to. After being at the clinic with its routine wake up time for so long she can't help but to wake up around the same time every morning. It's not too bad though, she always finds it amusing to see where everyone fell asleep and how trashed everything in the entire house looks.

She goes into the fancy, rather large bathroom; after she splashes a bit of water on her face she walks over to the medicine cabinet and she carefully inspects all the bottles of pills inside. They're not in plastic bags like the kinds you get from people around the back entrance of college, or other parties; these are expensive pills in pharmaceutical bottles, the orange kind that are so pretty with big medical words and warnings written on them. She looks at the names of them and stuffs a few in her purse for later. The rest she swallows using a discarded bottle of vodka she found on the kitchen counter.

She goes back outside and the warm air feels like it's melting against her skin. Everything seems so _vivid_ and she thinks to herself that this is how a blind man would feel if he woke up and suddenly had perfect sight.

The sun sends rays of warmth on her cold skin and she steps toward the trampoline. She thinks of when she was younger and she wanted to fly off to Neverland, and smiles to herself. She slowly lifts herself onto the trampoline and begins to jump haphazardly paying no mind to Sid sleeping inches away from her.

"Fuck!" he exclaims angrily as he topples loudly onto the ground. She doesn't feel bad, she's _so_ light and airy, and she feels as though she is floating out of her body and soaring into the bright blue sky. She can only laugh wildly.

"Wow! This is so lovely, lovely! Wow!"

* * *

She's so very talented when it comes to running away. She's perfected the art of it, the art of taking off with no disregard for what mess she's left behind. Unlike a lot of girls she doesn't need fancy food, or a giant bed to sleep in every night. She knows that she can survive without. She's learned that when you don't waste your money on food you can manage to get by almost anywhere for a short while. So, when things get to horrible she simply takes off. She disappears.

When she was much younger, she used to randomly leave her house whenever she had a bad day. Her parents never caught her leaving; they never even noticed her absence. She would climb out of her window and start to walk into different neighborhoods, and strike up conversations with random people. She would get the occasional question about why a girl as young as her was frolicking about unattended, but she would make up a story. Soon enough she got to the point where no one asked her questions, no one really cared enough to do anything about it. She would walk slowly along the edge of the sidewalk stepping on every crack in the ground she could find. She wondered if she would ever get kidnapped.

She would come home, and walk into the kitchen for a glass of water, and her parents assumed she had been playing in her room the entire time. She let them think that. She liked the idea that they thought she was such a good little child. She liked to let them believe that they were doing something right when it came to raising her.

She remembers how one time on Christmas day her parents were having a particularly awful screaming match outside of her bedroom and little Cassie was trembling, hiding underneath her bed. She wasn't crying, she was used to this, but it still made her scared. After the sound of glass breaking against the wall she panicked, she grabbed a backpack and stuffed some clothes, five dollars, and her favorite toys into it. She ran outside into the living room and said that she announced that she was leaving, because she was tired of this nonsense.

Her father only laughed, telling her that she wouldn't leave because then she wouldn't be able to open all of her Christmas presents, and sending her back to her bedroom.

Cassie threw her bag onto the floor and curled up into a ball on her bed. She stayed there for hours imagining how in another house a big family would be opening presents, and having fun. She fell asleep to the sound of her parents yelling.

* * *

"_New York I love you, but you're bringing me down."_

She likes this city. It's large and crowded and no one gives a fuck about anyone but themselves. It's great in a weird way. She wakes up and can be a different person every day. With every person that she meets she becomes an entirely new person. She makes a new name and life story for every person she converses with. So many masks, she's waiting for the day when she gets caught in a lie, but no one looks close enough. Maybe one day she'll find that she can't take off her masks, and she'll be a new person all together.

But of course it never happens. Every night when she unlocks the door to Adam's apartment she is reminded of who she really is. She is Cassie Ainsworth, and she's in love with Sid Jenkins forever. She loved him, and she left without a backwards glance. She's Cassie Ainsworth and she hasn't eaten in three days so she could be just so _fucking_ lovely.

She tried so hard to run away from everything. She's built so many bridges that she can't figure out which one leads her back home, back to the way things were before. And now she's given up, she's setting them all on fire, and she only laughs, the kind of laugh filled with a sick sort of desperation.. Her whole world is full of ruins and the air is thick and full of ashes.

She is Cassie Ainsworth and the world is no longer within her reach, it has never been in the palm of her hands. She's not a little girl anymore, she's a _grownup_. The world isn't as wonderful as it used to be. Everything's fucked up... She's fucked up.

She is Cassie Ainsworth and the world is no longer within her reach, not within the palms of her hands.

It's tumbled from her fingertips and shattered onto the ground.


End file.
